


Triple Letter Score

by Gin_Juice



Series: picture book [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Board Games, Dysfunctional Family, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18698062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gin_Juice/pseuds/Gin_Juice
Summary: “That is not how you spell that word, and you know it.”“Do I know that, Luther? Do I? I am a free-thinking, outside-the-box kind of person, and I don’t ‘play’ by your ‘rules.’”“Well, I suggest you play by Scrabble’s rules, because otherwise I’m quitting.”__________________________________________________Luther, Klaus, and Five play a board game, make dinner plans, and definitely don't learn how to apologize.





	Triple Letter Score

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series, but you don't need to read the previous installment to make sense of it. Basically: The Apocalypse was averted, and everyone's working to patch things up between them. Klaus, Ben, Five, and Luther are living at the Academy together, with regular appearances by their siblings. Klaus is sober, and it's going well. Luther's trying to start a vegetable garden, and it's going not so well. Ben remains dead, but Klaus can sometimes make him material.

Sometimes, Five thought that the universe was determined to sprinkle arsenic into every spoonful of sugar he found in his life.

Oh, you have the ability to jump through time and space? Here, get stuck as the last person on earth for a few decades.

Wait! There are other people who can time-travel, and here they are to rescue you! Just commit a couple hundred murders for them first.

Well, look at that! You gave The Commission the slip, and you reunited with your family, and, together, you’re all set to prevent the apocalypse. Aw, but too bad about your family being a pack of dysfunctional morons, huh? Guess the world ends either way.

Ah, now _here_ we go. You saved humanity successfully this go-round, and your siblings are all on speaking terms again. Things are looking up!

And you know what? If you can’t fix that broken latch on the bathroom door, it’s fine. You’ll get used to your brothers walking in on you with your pants down eventually, since _nobody in this house knows how to fucking knock_.

Five cautiously pushed the door. The latch caught once again on the outside, stopping it from fully closing.

“Fuck you!” he hissed, rapping the knob with the handle of the screwdriver he held.

“Ohhhhh, faaaamily!” a sing-song voice echoed down the corridor. “Where aaaare you?”

He had just about made up his mind to jump upstairs into his bedroom when Klaus turned the corner and spotted him.

“Aha! I caught one!” He trotted forward, pulling things out of the plastic shopping bag he carried. “Look what I found at the thrift store!”

He produced a large pair of women’s sunglasses and put them on with a flourish. “ _Very_ convincing knock-off Gucci, one dollar.”

“What a deal,” Five muttered.

“This shirt from the fifty cent bin.” He held it up to his chest. It was a black tee, and it read ‘HOTDOG EATING CHAMP—JONES FAMILY REUNION 2014’ in white lettering.

“That’s, uh… not your usual style.”

“Well, I’m going to cut off the sleeves, and then everything below ‘CHAMP.’” Klaus shimmied his hips. “Crop tops are _so_ hot right now.”

Five rubbed at his forehead while Klaus pulled out his last purchase and flung the bag aside.

“And, ta-daaaa!” He shoved the box in Five’s face and rattled it. “Scrabble!”

Five took a quick step backwards. “No,” he said swiftly. “No. The answer is no.”

“Aw, pretty please?” Klaus pushed the sunglasses up on his head to bat his lashes in a way he probably thought was winsome. “I’ll go find Luther and we can play just one game? That’ll be fun, huh, proving that you know more words than Luther?”

“No. I have things to do.”

“Things like more equations? Here’s a hot tip for you, lil’ buddy.”

Klaus leaned down and cupped a hand around his mouth like he was sharing a secret. “ _Math isn’t leaving town anytime soon._ You have years ahead of you, just full of numbers! You only have a few hours before I get distracted by something else and forget about this game, though, so—Away! To the living room!”

“I’m fixing this door,” Five said testily, jabbing the screwdriver in the direction of the bathroom. “Maybe you don’t mind giving everyone a free show every time you go to take a leak, but some of us prefer a little modesty.”

He braced himself for a stupid crack about how much joy Klaus’s naked ass brought to the world, but his brother was staring at something behind him.

Five turned and saw nothing. “Ghost? Or are you just being weird?”

“Ghost,” Klaus confirmed. “He’s from down undah, mate! And he says the latch is fine, the problem is that the top hinge on the door is loose.”

Five glanced up at it. It did look a little off-center, now that he mentioned it.

“Thank you, dead dude!” Klaus was saying to thin air. “Just so you know, though, this is not an ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ type dealio. If you’re about to ask me to go avenge you or whatever, that is a _hard_ no.”

Five watched this one-sided conversation with interest. In the early days of his sobriety, Klaus had wandered the halls with his hands clamped over his ears, muttering “Shut up, shut up, shut up” like a mantra and looking so ill and tired from withdrawal that he could have passed for a ghost himself.

They still heard him shouting “Leave me the fuck alone!” in his bedroom at night, but a few times, Five had caught him explaining to an invisible person _why_ they should leave him the fuck alone. His understanding was that the majority of these visitors from the great beyond weren’t rational, but it impressed him that Klaus was trying to be.

“Oh… Yeah?... Okay, well good for you then, pal.”

Klaus turned to Five with a beaming smile. “And voila! He’s gone. Probably because I’m such a no-nonsense tough guy.”

He struck a pose with one hand on his hip and the other behind his head, accidentally knocking his sunglasses to the floor in the process.

Five turned away with a roll of his eyes to examine the top hinge.

…Hm.

“Klaus,” he said.

“Oh, shoot!” Klaus clapped a hand to his forehead.  “I should have asked him if he knew how to fix that light in my room! He seemed handy, I bet he’d know what to do.”

“Klaus.”

“It’s something with, I dunno, circuit breakers? What even are circuit breakers? I feel like I should know that.” He turned to a spot of nothing, which was presumably where Ben stood, with a speculative frown. “Jeez, Dad really _wanted_ us to be helpless, didn’t he?”

“Klaus!”

Once he had his attention, he held out the screwdriver with a wordless glare.

Klaus stared down at it in confusion for a moment. A Cheshire grin began to spread across his face as realization dawned.

“Aw!” he cooed, ruffling Five’s hair. “Lil’ _buddy_!”

“We’ll be the same height when I’m an adult again,” Five snapped as he ducked out from under his hand.

“Oh, but right now you’re only three apples tall! Adorbs!”

“I’m not…!” Five let out a long sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “One game. For your silence.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Half an hour later, Five was sitting around the living room coffee table with Klaus and Luther, and the game was off to a rousing start as Klaus played the word ‘A.’

Luther picked up a tile, then set it down. Picked up another tile. Turned it over in his hands.

He set an ‘S’ under ‘A’ and smiled down at it in satisfaction.

“Ooh!” Klaus golf-clapped, and not even in a sarcastic way.

Five closed his eyes briefly. _They’re your brothers. You love them._

He selected his own tiles and spelled out ‘ALLOW.’

“Double letter score on ‘W.’” He marked it down on the pad of paper he’d brought out for the occasion.

Klaus looked over his shoulder distractedly as he fiddled with his pieces. “Ben has a suggestion.” He placed a second ‘S’ under ‘AS.’ “He thinks we should have tacos for dinner tonight.”

“Uh…” Luther’s eyes darted between Klaus and the empty space next to him. “I didn’t think he could eat.”

“He can’t, but he can smell, and he wants to smell tacos.”

A clearly unsettled Luther looked to Five for help, who shrugged and returned his attention to his letters. How many points would ‘GLUED’ give him?

“Well, okay. I’m sure Mom can manage that.” Luther offered an uncertain smile to the spot where he seemed to think Ben was and added ‘ES’ under ‘ASS.’

Two people, four turns, and one five-letter word between them. Jesus Christ.

 “No, no!” Klaus protested while Five arranged his pieces. “We should go out. Ooh, let’s look in the phone book and call around to find a place that makes fresh guacamole! Sober-me _loves_ avocados!”

A sudden shadow passed over his face, and he hunched forward with his elbows on his knees. “Am I turning into a basic bitch? You guys would tell me if I was, right?”

“I’ve never had a problem calling you names,” Five assured him. “It’s your turn, by the way.”

Klaus frowned down at his tiles, one bare foot tapping against the carpet. He added ‘ICC’ behind the ‘D’ Five had just played.

Luther fixed him with a stern look. “That is not how you spell that word, and you know it.”

Klaus scoffed and pretended to flip hair over his shoulder. “ _Do_ I know that, Luther? _Do I_? I am a free-thinking, outside-the-box kind of person, and I don’t ‘play’ by your ‘rules.’”

“Well, I suggest you play by Scrabble’s rules,” Five told him as he scrutinized his letters for his next move, “because otherwise I’m quitting.”

Klaus huffed. He took the second ‘C’ off the board and slapped a ‘K’ down in its place. “Happy now?”

“Are you kidding me?” Five asked in frustration. “You had the right letter and it’s worth more points anyway, why the fuck would you—“

He stopped himself. Took a deep breath. _Brother. Love him._

“Things are more fun if you take them seriously,” Luther informed Klaus in a sanctimonious tone. He examined his own letters for a second, then put another tile down to spell out ‘DICKS.’”

“Double letter score again,” Five announced as he slid ‘RENOWN’ into place.

He had never played this game before, but he had to admit, it wasn’t terrible. In a day or two, when it would have slipped Klaus’s mind that he’d bought it, maybe he’d snake it from his room. It would work just as well with one player as with multiple.

Maybe even better with just one player.

“That’s not a word,” he informed Klaus as his brother finished his turn.

“Hm?” He double checked his handiwork. “It’s a word.”

“Oh?” Five folded his hands on the table and fixed him with an icy glare. “Enlighten me, then. What is the definition of ‘TWUNK?’”

Klaus cleared his throat primly. “Twunk: A twink past his expiration date. A twink who has twing-ed his last twonkle.”

“What’s a twonkle?” Luther asked in mystification.

“Oh, I just made that one up.”

“You made _this_ one up!” Five accused, pointing at the board.

“I did not! Ben, tell him. Tell him ‘twunk’ is a real word.”

There was a brief pause, in which Klaus looked expectantly over his shoulder.

He turned back to his living brothers with a smarmy smile.

“You can’t hear it, but Ben agrees with me.”

Luther stretched a hand out in wonder to the spot Klaus had just been staring at while Five glowered across the table.

“Play by the rules, or I’m leaving. I mean it.”

“I am!” Klaus whined. “It’s a real word, I swear! People use it all the time.”

“What people?!”

Klaus’s face turned brooding and he wrapped his arms around his knees. “The guy behind me in line at the grocery store yesterday,” he grumbled. “He used it _totally incorrectly_ , but he used it.”

“HEY, BEN?” Luther called loudly. “BEN, CAN YOU HEAR ME? WHAT KIND OF TACOS DO YOU WANT TO SMELL?”

“Jesus!” Five said with a start. “You don’t have to shout!”

“I like to think I don’t fit into any particular category anyway, but I’m still a snack,” Klaus was musing out loud.

He threw Five a mournful glance. “I’m still puckish. I still have my girlish figure. I still get hit on by guys who are way too old for me. I’m not a _twunk_.” 

“Well, I don’t know how loud I need to be,” Luther said self-consciously. “Maybe it’s hard to hear people in the afterlife.”

“He’s dead, not in Canada!”

Klaus waved an urgent hand between them. “If someone doesn’t tell me I’m cute in the next five seconds, I’m going to flip this board over.”

Luther heaved a weary sigh, as though disappointed that he was being so glib about the serious business of Scrabble. “Why did you even want to play if you’re going to act like this?”

“Keep being such a wet blanket and I’ll un-invite you to taco night.” Klaus leaned back on his palms and made a face at him. “Me and Five will take the bus, we don’t need you and your driver’s license to enjoy delicious Mexican cuisine.”

Luther rolled his massive shoulders. “I don’t want to go anyway,” he said with a hint of unease. “Why can’t we just stay in and eat here?”

Klaus made a rude noise with his mouth. “Uh, because that’s boring? Come on, Dad is dead and we’ve got oodles of free time and money. Live a little!”

Five wasn’t sure if it was the comment about their father, or the reminder that he’d wasted thirty years of his life in service  to him, but something in Luther’s face hardened.

“Is this even Ben’s idea in the first place?” he asked. “Sometimes I think you’re putting words in his mouth to get us to do things _you_ want.”

Klaus blinked a few times, and for a split second, the stark naked hurt in his eyes was almost too much to look at.

Luther opened his mouth to speak again, but Klaus cut him off by springing to his feet and kicking the coffee table. The tiles slid across the board in a hapless jumble.

“Whoops!” he sang. He made a few jerky hand gestures that were half karate and half vogue. “Ben told me to show off my sweet kung-fu moves real quick, and I am but his lowly manservant.”

He suddenly stopped and cupped a hand around his ear. “Hark! Further instructions from beyond the grave!”

Five sighed deeply while Luther looked on in open-mouthed horror.

Klaus turned to them with an exaggerated shrug. “Now he’s telling me to go to my room and think about what I did. There’s just no pleasing some people!”

He fluttered the fingers of his ‘goodbye’ hand at them. “Au revoir, mi hermanos!”

The door closed behind him, and for a minute, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

Luther turned to Five.

“I’m gonna go…” He trailed off and looked away. “I’m just gonna go.”

Five watched him lumber out the other door, the one that led to the dining room.

He picked up an ‘L’ off the floor and examined it.

A spoonful of sugar, and then the arsenic.

{}{}{}{}{}

Scrabble _was_ pretty enjoyable when played by oneself, Five found.

He had filled the board with elegant words like ‘CALYX’ and ‘MAGISTRATE,’ and if he’d had an opponent, he was sure he’d be winning.

He had just hit the triple letter score with ‘OYSTER’ when he looked up and saw Ben studying the board across from him.

He fell backwards with an undignified squawk, and Ben glanced up in mild surprise.

“Oh, can you see me?”

“… _Yes_.”

His face brightened for just a second, then dimmed as he looked over his shoulder. “He must be trying to conjure Dave,” he mumbled.

He turned to Five with a rueful smile. “I become visible a lot while he’s doing that. We’re not sure why.”

“Oh.” Five took a deep inhale and tried to compose himself. This wasn’t the first time had had seen Ben solid, but the appearance of his long-departed brother always took his breath away.

“So, uh… Still no luck on that front, I take it? With Dave?”

Ben shook his head.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

They regarded each other in silence across the coffee table.

It was funny, Five thought. He had spent forty-five years wishing for nothing more than this, to be sitting at home with his siblings around him, and now that he was here—words always failed him.

‘ _I love you_?’ ‘ _Let’s go get tacos_?’ Stupid.

“Where’s Luther?”

“In the library.” Ben traced a finger over the table, as though fascinated by the way it felt. “He was looking up avocados in a gardening manual when I left. I think maybe he wants to try to grow some in the greenhouse.”

Five snorted. “Excellent plan. Much more efficient than apologizing.”

“Yeah, well.” Ben shrugged, a little smile playing around his lips. “You know.”

He knew. They all knew. If any one of them had the first clue on how to address the oceans of hurt that lay between them, they wouldn’t have blown up the damn moon in the first place.

“Tacos _were_ my idea, just for the record.” He paused, and added, “Sometimes Klaus does make things up, though. I wasn’t down with the waterslide at all.”

“I figured.”

Ben looked at him under his lashes, a little reproachful. “He just wants somebody to do stuff with him. You guys always shoot down his ideas.”

Five leaned back against the chair behind him and sighed. “In our defense, most of his ideas are insane.”

“Tacos aren’t insane. Tacos are delicious.”

He groaned, because he already knew he had lost. “Have you ever seen Luther try to squeeze into a booth at a restaurant?” he asked plaintively.

He got embarrassed _for_ Luther. That was how bad it was—it made Number Five Hargreeves, cold-blooded assassin and admitted asshole, squirm in discomfort.

“Yeah, but it’s like Klaus said. Just pick up the phonebook and—“

Ben disappeared.

Five scowled at the spot where he’d just sat. “You better tell Klaus to put some clothes on before I go to his room,” he ordered. “If I walk in there and see anything I don’t want to, I’m blaming you.”

{}{}{}{}{}

There was a correct way to go about this peacemaker business, Five was sure. A tactful way. A sensitive way.

But he didn’t know that way, so he’d decided to just blaze his own trail and hope for the best.

Luther was in the backyard, watering a row of deeply depressing tomato plants. Anyone else would have given up hope of them producing anything edible weeks ago, but Luther was determined. Or delusional.

“Hey,” Five called, and then jumped to Luther’s other side to avoid being sprayed by the hose when he turned around.

“I found a taco place. Be ready to go in thirty minutes. You’re driving.”

Luther kept his gaze trained on the rainbow that had formed under the arc of water. “I’ll drop you guys off and pick you up at six.”

“That’s a waste of gas. And if I’m alone in public with Klaus, someone’s going to wind up calling Child Protective Services.”

He didn’t respond.

Five shoved his hands into his pockets. “I phoned ahead. They’ve got patio seating, and they said this is usually a slow night for them. We’re going to sit outside and enjoy the weather. Thirty minutes.”

Luther shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know.” He sounded gloomy. “It might be better if I just stayed home.”

“Oh, stop moping,” Five snapped in irritation. “You can buy Klaus’s forgiveness with an order of nachos and by laughing at one of his jokes, so go get changed and meet us at the car.”

Luther blinked, looking a little taken aback. He started to say something, but Five held up a hand and gave him the glare that most men had only known as their last sight on earth.

“ _Tacos_. Thirty. Minutes.”

“…Okay.”

Five strode off across the lawn with a sense of contentment. He would never understand why their siblings thought Luther was so inflexible.

He’d do literally anything if presented with a sufficiently compelling argument.

Moments later, he knocked at Klaus’s bedroom door. “Are you decent?” he called.

There was a groan of bedsprings, and then a muffled scoff. “Decent? I am _wonderful_.  Spectacular! Positively _dripping_ with the milk of human kindness.”

“Are you wearing pants?” Five clarified.

He heard footsteps and a rustling of fabric behind the door. “Come on in, you little Puritan.”

Klaus had drawn blackout curtains across his windows, and a ring of extinguished candles sat on the floor. The room smelled strongly of sage. Maybe it was part of his conjuring routine, or maybe it was just to cover up the sour scent of unwashed laundry. Tidiness had never been one of Klaus’s strong suits.

“We’re going out for tacos in a half hour,” Five told him from the doorway. “Meet us in the garage.”

Klaus stretched out across the bed and took a deep drag off his cigarette.

“All three of us?” he asked in a cool tone. “I’m not sure there’s enough room in the car.”

“You were the one who wanted to go out to eat. Put on a shirt and come outside.”

Klaus shot him a brief, unreadable look and tangled his fingers in the dogtags around his neck. “Don’t sound so excited,” he muttered to the ceiling.

Five leaned on the doorframe and sighed. “Listen. You’re obnoxious. Your opinions and your suggestions and the way you never stop talking—all horrible.”

Klaus’s mouth was pinched tight and he curled further in on himself with every word, but Five continued evenly.

“We all still like you as much as we like Ben, though, so enough with this ‘woe-is-me’ bullshit.”

His brother turned to look at him, lazy drifts of cigarette smoke wreathing his surprised face.

“Luther is planning to grow you avocados in the greenhouse. We both know that is going to end in lots of disappointment and zero avocados, so I recommend you accept it as a nice gesture and act like a fucking adult for once.”

Klaus was regarding him now with a big, soppy smile and shining eyes.

“Lil’ buddy!” he exclaimed. “And jumbo buddy! Aww, my bro-bros are so—“

Five swore under his breath and slammed the door.

Even if he wouldn’t put it in his coffee, he decided that arsenic had its place.

The refrains of a song about quesadillas, seemingly made up on the spot, followed him down the corridor, and in his mind he heard Dolores laughing at him, clear as a bell and twice as sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> I really dig the idea of an older ghost taking a fatherly interest in the Hargreeves. Like, he's watching them fumble their way through life in growing concern, until he's finally just like "EXCUSE me, this car needed an oil change 600 miles ago, and nobody's checking to make sure the smoke detectors still work, and do you even look at your heating bill?? The house doesn't need to be 80 degrees, PUT ON A SWEATER!"


End file.
